crevette | Deep thoughts.

I am in therapy.

This, of course, should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or claims to know me, but I felt I should put that right out there.

I had a hard time with the combination of menopause hormones, child leaving home, child's personal issues, and a long time and tenuously controlled anxiety disorder. All of these things together led to a savory melange of stress and panic attacks that kept me paralyzed with fear or kept me crying in a fetal position.

Better living through chemistry, with the addition of therapy.

Therapy is HARD. Really, really hard. Therapy is painful. Really, really painful. But sometimes you have to lance an infection to get the badness out and start healing.

I'm dealing with memories I didn't realize I had. I'm dealing with baggage I chose to ignore. I'm dealing with me and all my issues I have with me.

Your brain has all kinds of self-protection mechanisms built in. I didn't know that. It was only through talking with my therapist that I realized that I don't remember any of my birthdays as a child. I don't remember much of my childhood at all. Dredging up memories is just that--dredging through layers of silt and mud.

And when you get to the memory and look at it... really, really look at it... and see as an adult what you went through as a child... And then you realize that while you're okay with this happening to you, if you saw it happening to another child, you'd be enraged. You'd be horrified. You'd do anything you could to keep a child from being treated that way. That feeling of disconnection is abnormal. So very abnormal.

My therapist tells me that I'm not fucked up. The people who raised me were fucked up, but I'm not. I'm a survivor.

I am in therapy, and I am in the process of healing.